(August 17, 2016 at 3:54 pm)Irrational Wrote:(August 17, 2016 at 9:56 am)Tiberius Wrote: Most people seem to get confused over free will because it certainly seems that we have it (we are actively thinking about decisions before making them).
The problem happens when you start to really question that "active thinking". Sure, you can say you went to an ice cream store and thought about whether to have chocolate or vanilla, and decided on chocolate, but... did you actually decide? There's no actual way to tell; we can't rewind time and observe you choosing vanilla instead. From an external perspective, all you did was go into the store and get chocolate.
It gets even more confusing when you think about the nature of free will vs the physical nature of the brain. The brain is a bunch of neurons firing in reaction to various stimuli. What if your brain is the one actually making the decision (predetermined by the stimuli) and your "thought process" in which you actively come to a decision is just an illusion, a byproduct of the brain.
Occams razor suggests that the illusion of free will is more likely than actual free will.
I agree with those premises but reach a different conclusion because I'm using imo a better definition of free as related to will. Even if I don't actually consciously make the decisions but are simply made aware of them after the fact, and even though external factors certainly play a role in the decision making process in an indirect manner, if it's my brain formulating these decisions, then it's still me (arbitrarily) making these decisions, though I may not be consciously making them. It's not like I end up consciously disapproving of these decisions. So I still do what I desire to do.
IOW: You see it a different way because you're a compatabilist.
